General Discussion Of Moderation Procedures (aka 'The Whine List')

oh, and Moose, my name is spelled with a lowercase "a". please endeavor to at least capitalize my name correctly if you're going to suspend me for capitalization.

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אָרַח

I don't especially mind, Percy, it's just that of I'm going to be suspended for picky issues like capitalization, the person doing it should at least try to get the capitalization of my username correct. We have a few members here who do not capitalize their usernames, for whatever reason. For instance, right now, bluegenes, dwise1, jar, and subbie are all online. None of them capitalize their names.

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אָרַח

would we be interested in discussing this question?personally, i find that capitalization slows down not only my typing, but also my reading. minuscules ("lower case") were originally designed to aid in both, as we can typically recognize minuscules by their counterforms alone. for instance, compare reading a block of text in majuscule:

quote:

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In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

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to that same text entirely in minuscule:

quote:

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In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

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which one reads faster, and is easier on the eyes? keep in mind that the original greek and latin alphabets are all majuscule, and minuscules developed over time through several stages (rustic, uncial, half-uncial, etc) with the specific intention of aiding scribes in reading and writing large blocks of text. personally, i find that punctuation and spacing is more than sufficient to distinguish the beginnings and endings of sentences (many languages such as ancient greek and hebrew lacked these as well, btw), and context generally sufficient to distinguish proper nouns. before the invention of minuscule scripts, context was the only way to distinguish between proper and improper nouns. even after the invention of minuscule scripts, all nouns (and some verbs and adjectives) were generally capitalized.i had sort of thought about putting together a new topic on this, going over the history of capitalization and whatnot, and a discussion about its relevance in a language that changes as fluidly as english -- and more importantly whether or not capitalization should be a suspendable offense. perhaps i will put it together when moose gets around to suspending me for this post.

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אָרַח

if you hit "peek" on the above post, you can compare to a third example, the original text. the KJV bible i cited above capitalizes somewhat arbitrarily at the beginning of every verse regardless of punctuation or grammar. frequently, this results in a capital following a comma. this is somewhat representative of that period of english. earlier examples include frankly even more arbitrary capitalization schemes, often capitalizing the majority of the first letters. older still, capitalization is mostly absent, except for the first letter or any particular passage, similar to the way manuscript often illuminated the first letter. the modern system of capitalization wasn't locked in until roughly the 18th century.the interesting point is not that we have added capitals, but rather that since their addition, we have consistently done away with capitals, all but excluding the first letters of proper nouns, and the first letter of a sentence. the trend is not towards caps, but rather away from. removing them entirely is simply the next logical step.further, i find lack of capitalism not nearly as much of a deterrent to reading as i do poor post organization and line breaks. overly long paragraphs, or a bunch of short one-liners, do not scream "read this", and forgetting to add that extra space between paragraphs is even worse. for instance, many of the exceptional creationists PNTs here, copy-pastas, are generally quite unreadable thanks to poor formatting alone. correct capitalization cannot save them. perhaps. but i did say as much in the above post -- i find it much faster to type this way. the potential drawback here is that i am much more prone to typographical error. but an advantage is that it becomes much easier to edit my text, as i can rearrange clauses essentially at will.however, for the record, i do in fact use my shift keys. when i type anything italic, for instance, i'm generally doing it in html (not bbcode), and the less-than and greater-than symbols require using a shift key. certainly. and it comes up sometimes in the scriptural debates. capitalization i mean, not jacking off a horse. as i mentioned above, even modern hebrew lacks any kind of case difference.the square aramaic script used in biblical hebrew developed from proto-semitic in the jewish scribal community much the same way capitalis rustica derived from the capitals script used for roman, well, capitals -- it was simply easier to write; more suited to ink and paper/papyrus/vellum. later scribes, like rashi, developed scripts much like the roman uncials, and used them to set their comments apart from the formal scriptural text. further, there is even a modern cursive handwritten script design for quick and fluid writing. i can personally confirm that it's far easier to write by hand.but the mixture of majuscule and minuscule scripts just never happened in hebrew, probably due to the lack of a tradition illuminating manuscripts. and so, even modern hebrew lacks case. this fact frequently comes up when discussing other gods, found in the old testament. the masoretic hebrew makes no distinction between the elohim in the "gods of canaan" and the elohim that refers to yahweh.

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אָרַח

i think it's important to understand that english is a fluid and changing language, that capitalization is one such factor that has changed and will continue to change. english also lacks a formal board of any type that determines the rules for the language; these decisions are based mostly on common practices.for instance, there are several grammatical rules that have changed drastically very recently. it's now almost entirely acceptable to end sentences with prepositions, and it's become common practice in the UK to leave periods outside of quotes when the period is not part of the quote. the KJV is not archaic in any way. it's only 400 years olds, and represents perhaps the most popular work in modern english. the english spoken at the time of shakespeare and king james is, for all intents and purposes, modern. archaic english looks like this:note the use of capitals.Edited by arachnophilia, : centered image

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אָרַח

yes! i think you will find that a wealth of alternative spellings still exist in english. for instance, i have a habit of typing "neighour" and "colour" and i use "theatre" to mean "a place where you see plays" and "theater" to mean "a place where you see films". i'm sure you can think of a myriad other examples if you really tried. indeed. although not typset, you will see it in the above example i posted of old english, a manuscript of beowulf. i agree. and it will continue to change. however, what we speak is significantly closer to shakespeare than it is to chaucer (middle english), or beowulf (old). and it has yet to change enough to warrant arbitrarily calling it anything else. this is a whine of poor students of shakespeare (and the bible). shakespeare (and the kjv bible) are much easier to understand than most people expect. and for shakespeare, especially when performed. it's modern english, just with some different vocabulary here and there, an alternate spelling or two, and some slightly different usages. you get more significant differences going from one colloquial dialect to another. compare "rubber" as used in america, canada, and england. no, it's just significantly easier to type, and for me to read. you might be surprised. the internet (especially twitter) is quickly changing the grammatical norms. perhaps this, to you, represents a perversion of the language -- but the invention of case usages was quite similar. note that the above old english example does not capitalize the first letter of a sentence, but does capitalize the entire first line, which happens to break in the middle of a word. capitalization here was strictly a stylistic concern, and not a grammatical one. i understand the need for line breaks and punctuation, i assure you. it comes up rather frequently in the biblical debates, as the original hebrew bible was written without either, or spaces between words. meaning is sometimes confused in translations here.i am not arguing for doing away with that. or even capitalization. just that it's a bit silly to enforce something that is so historically subjective.

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אָרַח

interestingly, i find paragraph spacing much more important. mostly the space between paragraphs (which, ahem, if we're going to get all MLA here is also incorrect), but also the paragraph indents which this board does not allow. i find poorly spaced posts, especially those of the copy-pasta creationist convention, exceptionally difficult to read. but that's just me. thank you!

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אָרַח

alright, alright guys, let's not get picky. i understood him perfectly fine -- which is just my point. we don't have to be perfect to communicate ideas sufficiently.and frankly, when dealing with issues like religion, i'd rather emphasize the imperfect in my own posts.Edited by arachnophilia, : double vision

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אָרַח

perhaps. but i think the general consensus is that we shouldn't suspend members for poor grammatical habits.i probably will not have time to put together a comprehensive PNT tonight, though.

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אָרַח

oh, yes, i'm fairly fluent in html, but setting a style for each paragraph is a little frustrating and slow, and the board does not seem to allow the more universal "style" tag. and i don't blame you for blocking that one -- think of the amusing things one could do if you didn't. for instance, i could easily turn everyone's posts into all lowercase...Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

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אָרַח

no no, it's an html thing. you can pop a text/css stylesheet into the actual code of a page (or import one), as opposed to manually styling every element. like so: HTML style tagi don't think any board allows it, and for good reasons. your board allows far more html than most.Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

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אָרַח

you can't have looked at too many forums, as i'm registered at quite a few. well, as crash pointed out, that's not what "double spaced" means, but yes, that is part of standard MLA (i think?). i actually prefer it myself, and always have, but i've stopped typing that way since html doesn't allow it. it collapses all extra spaces in text. i'd literally have to add two extra non-breaking spaces at the end of each sentence, and i'm not going to do that when period-space is sufficient.MLA also does not like the extra blank line between paragraphs, which i believe that nearly everyone does here for the sake of clarity.Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

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אָרַח

i might have written a paper once in courier. i can't, for the life of me, remember why.i have also had at least one teacher at some point when i was in school who insisted on "period space space capital" which i only remember because i thought it was absurd at the time.

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אָרַח

and people think i'm weird for owning a turntable.in any case, in reference to the original sub-thread title, there's a very famous message board with a somewhat high percentage of lowercase posts. it just made the news recently, as members took down the webpages of visa, mastercard, and the government of sweden.

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אָרַח

i believe the pertinent question is whether a message board is an application of "formal written english", or more akin to "message sending, chat, tweeting etc".i would argue the latter.

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אָרַח